Managing people 02

Key concepts and terms

● Business model
● Business model innovation
● Competitive advantage
● Core competencies
● Horizontal integration
● Management
● Resource-based view
● Strategic capability
● Strategic fit
● Strategic management
● Strategy
● Vertical integration

l E a r N i N g O u TCOM E s
On completing this chapter you should be able to define these key
concepts. You should also understand:

● What managing means

● The purpose of managing
● The role of the manager
● The process of strategic management
● The relationship between leadership and management

Introduction
Management is essentially about managing people. But, as covered in this
chapter, managers are also responsible for generally controlling the business

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 24 Leading, managing and developing fundamentals

or their part of it by managing their other resources — finance, work systems

and technology. Additionally, they have to manage time and themselves.
The word ‘management’ is derived from the Italian verb ‘maneggiare’,
which means ‘to handle a horse’. This definition at least states that to man-
age is to have charge of or responsibility for something, but there is clearly
more to it than that and this is what this chapter is about. Consideration is
given initially to what the process of managing is and the role of the man-
ager. Managing includes the vital process of strategic management and this
is also examined in the chapter. Finally, the processes of management and
leadership are compared.

Management defined
Management is the process of making things happen. Managers define goals,
determine and obtain the resources required to achieve the goals, allocate
those resources to opportunities and planned activities and ensure that those
activities take place as planned in order to achieve predetermined objec-
tives. Management can be described as getting things done through people
by exercising leadership. This definition emphasizes the importance of the
leadership role but it should be remembered that managers are also there to
make effective use of the other resources available to them.

Purpose of management
The purpose of management is to satisfy a range of stakeholders. In the pri-
vate sector, this means making a profit and creating value for shareholders,
and producing and delivering valued products and services at a reasonable
cost for customers. In the public sector, management is there to ensure that
the services the community requires are delivered effectively. In the volun-
tary sector, management sees that the purposes of the charity are achieved
and also keeps the faith of the community and donors. In all sectors man-
agement is about exercising social responsibility and providing rewarding
employment and development opportunities for employees.

The role of the manager

Peter Drucker (1955: 1) stated that ‘The manager is the dynamic, life-giving
element in every business.’
Managers are there to get results by ensuring that their function, unit
or department operates effectively. They manage people and their other re-
sources, which include time and themselves. They are accountable for at-
taining goals, having been given authority over those working in their unit
or department.

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 Managing people 25

The traditional model of what managers do is that it is a logical and sys-

tematic process of planning, organizing, motivating and controlling. How-
ever, this is misleading. Managers often carry out their work on a day-to-day
basis in conditions of variety, turbulence and unpredictability. Managers
may have to be specialists in ambiguity, with the ability to cope with con-
flicting and unclear requirements.
Managers are doers. They deal with events as they occur. But they must
also be concerned with where they are going. This requires strategic thinking,
especially at higher levels. As strategic thinkers, managers develop a sense of
purpose and frameworks for defining intentions and future directions. They
are engaged in the process of strategic management as considered below.

Strategic management
Strategic management is an approach to management which involves taking
a broad and longer-term view of where the business or part of the business is
going and managing activities in ways which ensure that this strategic thrust is
maintained. Boxall and Purcell (2003: 44) explained that: ‘Strategic manage-
ment is best defined as a process. It is a process of strategy making, of form-
ing and, if the firm survives, reforming its strategy over time.’ The purpose of
strategic management was expressed by Rosabeth Moss Kanter (1984: 288) as
being to ‘elicit the present actions for the future’ and become ‘action vehicles –
integrating and institutionalizing mechanisms for change’ (ibid: 301).
The key strategic management activity as identified by Thompson and
Strickland (1996: 3) is ‘deciding what business the company will be in and
forming a strategic vision of where the organization needs to be headed – in
effect, infusing the organization with a sense of purpose, providing long-
term direction, and establishing a clear mission to be accomplished’.
The focus is on identifying the organization’s mission and strategies, but
attention is also given to the resource base required to make it succeed. Stra-
tegic management involves the development and implementation of strategy
(business, HRM and L&D) as described below. It also includes the impor-
tant activity of business model innovation, which identifies opportunities to
increase the competitiveness and prosperity of the business through a review
of all the elements of its business model (a picture of an organization which
explains how it achieves competitive advantage and makes money).
Strategic management involves the formulation of strategy and it has
to take account of the concepts of core competences or capabilities, the
resource-based view, strategic fit and strategic capability.

Strategy
Strategy is a declaration of intent which sets out the approach selected to
achieve defined goals in the future. It was defined by Thompson and Strickland

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 26 Leading, managing and developing fundamentals

(1996: 20) as: ‘The pattern of actions managers employ to achieve organi-
zational objectives.’
Strategy is forward looking. It is about deciding where you want to go
and how you mean to get there. It is concerned with both ends and means.
It states: ‘This is what we want to do and this is how we intend to do it.’
Strategies define longer-term goals but they also cover how those goals will
be attained (strategic planning). They guide purposeful action to deliver the
required result.
But strategy formulation is not such a deterministic, rational and con-
tinuous process as is often supposed. Sparrow et al (2010: 4) asserted suc-
cinctly that: ‘Strategy is not rational and never has been.’ It has been said
(Bower, 1982: 631) that ‘strategy is everything not well defined or under-
stood’. This may be going too far, but in reality, strategy formulation can
best be described as ‘problem solving in unstructured situations’ (Digman,
1990: 53) and strategies will always be formed under conditions of partial
ignorance. Quinn (1980: 9) pointed out that a strategy may simply be ‘a
widely held understanding resulting from a stream of decisions’. He believed
that strategy formulation takes place by means of ‘logical incrementalism’,
ie it evolves in several steps rather than being conceived as a whole.
Mintzberg (1987) argued that in theory strategy is a systematic process:
first we think, then we act: we formulate, then we implement. But we also
act in order to think. In practice, ‘a realized strategy can emerge in response
to an evolving situation’ and the strategic planner is often ‘a pattern organ-
izer, a learner if you like, who manages a process in which strategies and
visions can emerge as well as be deliberately conceived’ (ibid: 68). This con-
cept of ‘emergent strategy’ conveys the essence of how in practice organiza-
tions develop their business and HR strategies.

Core competencies and distinctive capabilities

Core competencies or distinctive capabilities describe what the organization
is specially or uniquely capable of doing. The concept of core competencies
was originated by Pralahad and Hamel (1990), who described them as a
company’s critical resource which represented the collective learning in the
organization. Distinctive capabilities can exist in such areas as technology,
innovation, marketing, delivering quality and making good use of human
and financial resources. Understanding distinctive capabilities – what they
are and should become – is an essential task for those concerned with HRM
and L&D in achieving their aim of enhancing the human resource capability
of the organization.

The resource-based view

The resource-based view of strategy is that the firm is a bundle of distinctive
resources that are the keys to developing competitive advantage – the strategic

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 Managing people 27

capability of a firm depends on its resource capability. It is based on the

ideas of Penrose (1959: 24–25) who wrote that the firm is ‘an administrative
organization and a collection of productive resources’ and saw resources as
‘a bundle of potential services’. It was expanded by Wernerfelt (1984: 172),
who explained that strategy ‘is a balance between the exploitation of exist-
ing resources and the development of new ones’. Resources were defined by
Hunt (1991: 322) as ‘anything that has an enabling capacity’.
The concept was developed by Barney (1991: 102), who stated that ‘a
firm is said to have a competitive advantage when it is implementing a val-
ue-creating strategy which is not simultaneously being implemented by any
current or potential competitors and when these other firms are unable to
duplicate the benefits of this strategy’. This will happen if their resources are
valuable, rare, inimitable and non-substitutable.
The resource-based view (RBV) provides a practical justification for key
aspects of a firm’s HRM and L&D policies and practices such as human
capital management, talent management, knowledge management, and
learning and development. Kamoche (1996) stated that the RBV builds on
and provides a unifying framework for the field of strategic human resource
management. Boxall (1996: 66) pointed out that: ‘The resource-based view
of the firm provides a conceptual basis, if we needed one, for asserting that
key human resources are sources of competitive advantage.’

Strategic fit
Strategic fit is a way of achieving competitive advantage which means at-
taining and sustaining better results than business rivals, thus placing the
firm in a strong competitive position. The focus is upon the organization
and the world around it. To maximize competitive advantage a firm must
match its capabilities and resources to the opportunities available in the
external environment. As Hofer and Schendel (1986: 4) concluded:
A critical aspect of top management’s work today involves matching
organizational competences (internal resources and skills) with the opportunities
and risks created by environmental change in ways that will be both effective
and efficient over the time such resources will be deployed.

Strategic capability
Strategic capability refers to the ability of an organization to develop and
implement strategies which will achieve sustained competitive advantage. It
is therefore about the capacity to select the most appropriate vision, to de-
fine realistic intentions, to match resources to opportunities and to prepare
and implement strategic plans.
The strategic capability of an organization depends on the strategic capa-
bilities of its managers. People who display high levels of strategic capabil-
ity know where they are going and know how they are going to get there.

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 28 Leading, managing and developing fundamentals

They recognize that although they must be successful now to succeed in

the future, it is always necessary to create and sustain a sense of purpose
and direction. Managers who think strategically will be aware that they
are responsible first, for planning how to allocate resources to opportuni-
ties which contribute to the implementation of strategy, and secondly, for
managing these opportunities in ways which will add value to the results
achieved by the firm.

Leadership and management compared

Are leadership and management the same or different? Some commenta-
tors regard leadership as synonymous with management, others see them as
distinct but closely linked and equally necessary activities, others consider
management a subset of leadership, and yet others praise leadership and
demonize management. Warren Bennis (1989) viewed managers as those
who promote efficiency, follow the rules and accept the status quo, while
leaders focus on challenging the rules and promoting effectiveness. John
Kotter (1991) saw managers as being the ones who plan, budget, organize
and control, while leaders set direction, manage change and motivate peo-
ple. Hersey and Blanchard (1998) claimed that management merely consists
of leadership applied to business situations; or in other words, management
forms a subset of the broader process of leadership.
As Birkinshaw (2010: 23) commented: ‘By dichotomizing the work of
executives in this way, Kotter, Bennis and others squeezed out the essence of
what managers do and basically left them with the boring work that leaders
“don’t want”.’ His view on the leadership-versus-management debate was
that: ‘Leadership is a process of social influence, concerned with the traits,
styles and behaviours of individuals that causes others to follow them. Man-
agement is the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals. To
put it simply, we all need to be both leaders and managers’ (ibid: 23). Earlier,
Mintzberg (2004: 22) summed it all up (as he often did) when he wrote:
‘Let’s stop the dysfunctional separation of leadership from management. We
all know that managers who don’t lead are boring, dispiriting. Well, leaders
who don’t manage are distant, disconnected.’
The answer to the question posed at the beginning of this section is
that management is different from leadership although they are closely
associated. Management is the process of making effective use of all
available resources in order to achieve goals while leadership focuses on
the key resource which enables goals to be achieved, ie people. Manage-
ment necessarily involves leadership and leadership necessarily involves
management.

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 Managing people 29

K e y l e a r n i n g po i nt s

Management
Management is the process of making things happen. Managers define goals, determine
and obtain the resources required to achieve the goals, allocate those resources to
opportunities and planned activities and ensure that those activities take place as
planned in order to achieve predetermined objectives.
The purpose of management is to satisfy a range of stakeholders.

Strategic management
Strategic management is an approach to management which involves taking a broad and
longer-term view of where the business or part of the business is going and managing
activities in ways which ensure that this strategic thrust is maintained.

Business model innovation

Business model innovation is an approach to strategy which focuses on how the firm
creates value. The aim is to change the ways in which companies view their business
operations and to provide guidance on mapping their future strategy.

Strategy
Strategies define longer-term goals but they also cover how those goals will be attained
(strategic planning). They guide purposeful action to deliver the required result.
Strategy formulation is not necessarily a deterministic, rational and continuous
process.

Core competencies
Core competencies or distinctive capabilities describe what the organization is specially
or uniquely capable of doing.

The resource-based view of strategy

A firm is a bundle of distinctive resources that are the keys to developing competitive
advantage – the strategic capability of a firm depends on its resource capability. Boxall
(1996) pointed out that: ‘The resource-based view of the firm provides a conceptual basis,
if we needed one, for asserting that key human resources are sources of competitive
advantage.’

Strategic fit
To maximize competitive advantage, a firm must match its capabilities and resources to
the opportunities available in the external environment.

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 30 Leading, managing and developing fundamentals

Strategic capability
The ability of an organization to develop and implement strategies which will achieve
sustained competitive advantage.

Leadership and management

Leadership is a process of social influence, concerned with the traits, styles and
behaviours of individuals that causes others to follow them. Management is the act of
getting people together to accomplish desired goals.

References
Barney, J (1991) Firm resources and sustained competitive advantage, Journal of
Management Studies, 17 (1), pp 99–120
Bennis, W (1989) On Becoming a Leader, New York, Addison Wesley
Birkinshaw, J (2010) An experiment in reinvention, People Management, 15 July,
pp 22–24
Bower, J L (1982) Business policy in the 1980s, Academy of Management Review,
7 (4), pp 630–38
Boxall, P F (1996) The strategic HRM debate and the resource-based view of the
firm, Human Resource Management Journal, 6 (3), pp 59–75
Boxall, P F and Purcell, J (2003) Strategy and Human Resource Management,
Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan
Digman, L A (1990) Strategic Management – concepts, decisions, cases,
Georgetown, Ontario, Irwin
Drucker, P (1955) The Practice of Management, London, Heinemann
Hersey, P and Blanchard, K H (1998) Management of Organizational Behavior,
Englewood Cliffs NJ, Prentice Hall
Hofer, C W and Schendel, D (1986) Strategy Formulation: Analytical Concepts,
New York, West Publishing
Hunt, S (1991) The resource-advantage theory of competition, Journal of
Management Inquiry, 4 (4), pp 317–22
Kamoche, K (1996) Strategic human resource management within a resource
capability view of the firm, Journal of Management Studies, 33 (2), pp 213–33
Kanter, R M (1984) The Change Masters, London, Allen & Unwin
Kotter, J P (1991) Power, dependence and effective management, in J Gabarro (ed)
Managing People and Organizations, Boston MA, Harvard Business School
Publications
Mintzberg, H (1987) Crafting strategy, Harvard Business Review, July–August,
pp 66–74
Mintzberg, H (2004) Enough leadership, Harvard Business Review, November,
p 22
Penrose, E (1959) The Theory of the Growth of the Firm, Oxford, Blackwell
Prahalad, C K and Hamel, G (1990) The core competence of the organization,
Harvard Business Review, May–June, pp 79–93

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 Managing people 31

Quinn, J B (1980) Strategies for Change: Logical Incrementalism, Georgetown,

Ontario, Irwin
Sparrow, P, Hesketh, A, Hird, M and Cooper, C (2010) Introduction: Performance-
led HR, in P Sparrow, A Hesketh, M Hird and C Cooper (eds) Leading HR,
Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, pp 1–22
Thompson, A A and Strickland, A J (1996) Strategic Management, Concepts and
cases, 9th edn, Chicago, Irwin
Wernerfelt, B (1984) A resource-based view of the firm, Strategic Management
Journal, 5 (2), pp 171–80

Questions
1 How would you define management?
2 What is the purpose of management?
3 What is strategic management?
4 What is strategy?
5 How would you describe the process of strategy formulation?
6 What is a business model?
7 What is business model innovation?
8 What is a core competency?
9 What is the resource-based view?
10 What are the meaning and significance of strategic fit?
11 What is strategic capability?
12 What is the difference between management and leadership?

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